According to The Indian Express, two offshore shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have been linked to the Adani Group, as revealed through records accessed from offshore corporate service provider Trident Trust. The Financial Times had previously named these companies.
The news about these offshore companies has put shares of various Adani Group companies, including Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Power Ltd, Adani Green Energy Ltd, Adani Wilmar Ltd, Adani Total Gas Ltd, Adani Ports & SEZ, and Adani Energy Solutions Ltd, in the spotlight. The Indian Express obtained these records as part of the Pandora Papers investigation.
Investigative reporting platform OCCRP, backed by George Soros, reported that millions of dollars were invested in publicly traded stocks of the Adani Group through opaque Mauritius funds, obscuring the involvement of alleged business partners of the Adani family. Financial Times, based on documents accessed by OCCRP, identified two individuals associated with the Adani Group’s chairperson Gautam Adani’s brother Vinod Adani: Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli, a United Arab Emirates national who used Gulf Asia Trade and Investment Limited, and Chang Chung-Ling, a Taiwan national who used Lingo Investment Limited.
Financial Times also reported that these individuals used a Bermuda fund to accumulate and trade significant positions in Adani Group company shares. The Adani Group has strongly denied these allegations, referring to them as “recycled allegations” and stating that they appear to be an orchestrated attempt by Soros-funded interests, supported by certain sections of the foreign media, to revive the baseless Hindenburg report.
The Adani Group emphasized that these claims are based on closed cases from a decade ago, when the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) investigated allegations of over-invoicing, fund transfers abroad, related-party transactions, and investments through Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs). Independent adjudicating authorities and an appellate tribunal confirmed that there was no over-valuation and that the transactions were conducted in accordance with applicable laws, as reported by the media last week.
